Regarding tab bars in iPhone apps
Brent Simmons, in response to Justin Williams:
I totally see Justin’s points, and agree most ways, most of the time…But I’ve also found that people who aren’t professional iPhone developers like tab bars. My experience is just mine, of course, and it’s mostly to do with news/photo/video apps. My theory is that, for some people, a tab bar makes an app feel richer, more generous, more professional, more serious.
I agree with Brent. Users like tab bars. It’s an easily understood concept and it feels immediately familiar because of Apple’s excellent built in applications. It also adds a little sex to the interface. Say what you will, but the designers at Apple really got that black on blue look right. So right that I think some developers put that tab bar in there for looks alone, contributing to the glut of non-necessary tab bar utilization.
My real issue with Justin’s post is where he disregards tab bars as some kind of quick, dirty way out of a tough design situation:
Rather than taking the easy way and slapping a tab bar at the bottom of your UI, put the extra effort into the design process to see if it is possible to do the application using a single navigation stack.
Tabs can certainly be abused, but not every application should be based on a drill-down navigation scheme. In Tumblr for iPhone, the application is (deliberately) split into three separate experiences: composition, consumption and configuration. This is exactly what tab bars are for, and in these situations, should be the preferred navigation construct. In fact, I argue that stuffing disparate views and functionality into a drill-down navigation experience could be just as abusive as an obligatory tab bar.
